Vol. XV, No. 4 



WASHINGTON 



April, 1904 



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TRAVELS IN ARABIA AND ALONG THE 



PERSIAN GULF 



By David G. Fairchild 

 Agricultural Explorer of the U. S. Department of Agriculture 



Copyright, 1904, by the National Geographic Magazine 



WILL, the hanging gardens of 

 Babylon be rebuilt and Chal- 

 dea be re-created ? are ques- 

 tions which the American public seldom 

 thinks about ; and yet such an expe- 

 rienced engineer of irrigation as Sir 

 Wni. Willcocks, of Egypt, declares, 

 after examining the accounts of the old 

 irrigating canals of the land of Babylon, 

 that the day is coming when this great 

 region that was at one time one of the 

 wealthiest in the world, but which today 

 is little but a waste of desert, may some 

 day be rebuilt and become, as Egypt is 

 rapidly becoming, a wealthy agricultural 

 country. 



It was with the object of having this 

 land of Babylon investigated and of se- 

 curing for the American date garden of 

 Arizona the best varieties of Persian 

 and Arabian date plants that Mr Bar- 

 bour Lathrop, of Chicago, sent the 

 writer, as his agricultural explorer, on a 

 trip to Bagdad. The region is noted as 

 the largest date-growing region in the 

 world, and probably ten millions would 

 not be an exaggerated estimate of the 



number of majestic date palms that are 

 scattered from the mouth of the Persian 

 Gulf to beyond the region of Bagdad. 



While the principal attention of an 

 agricultural explorer must be given to 

 the gathering of information regarding 

 the plants of a region, the general polit- 

 ical problems can not fail to impress 

 him. Especially do such questions 

 force themselves upon his attention in a 

 region like that of the Persian Gulf, 

 which, in the minds of the residents 

 themselves, it is believed will have an 

 interesting and possibly eventful future. 



The trip from Bombay to Busra, 

 which was taken on the Pemba, a steamer 

 of fifteen hundred tons burden, required 

 thirteen days, including the various 

 stops along the Persian and Arabian 

 coasts. These short stops give one a 

 glimpse of the wastes of desert land, 

 of the interesting types of Arabs and 

 their modes of life, and allow one 

 time to converse briefly with a few 

 European officials and date merchants 

 who spend their lives in this out-of- 

 the-way part of the world. The Per- 



